Montgomery to unveil statue in honor of Rosa Parks

A new statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks will officially be unveiled in downtown Montgomery, Ala., on Sunday. 

The Alabama city announced that the statue will stand at Montgomery Plaza at the Court Street Fountain, The Associated Press reported. The unveiling of the monument marks the anniversary of Parks’s Dec. 1, 1955, arrest after she refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man.  

The statue will be located approximately 30 feet from where Parks is believed to have boarded the bus, said Ashley Ledbetter, executive director of the Montgomery Area Business Committee for the Arts, to the AP.

Alongside the statue, there will be four granite markers to honor the four women who were plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark Supreme Court case that ruled that racial segregation on Montgomery buses was unconstitutional. The women are Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith, Susie McDonald and Claudette Colvin.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed will both speak at the unveiling, the AP reported. Reed was elected as the city’s first black mayor earlier this year.

Parks’s arrest served as a catalyst for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a key moment in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.